Where I chronicle my adventures following false leads, untangling family relationships, looking for needles in haystacks (and sometimes finding them), and consider the joys--and sometimes the troubles--of genealogy and roots.

Just your basic obsessed genealogical researcher.

operating from the wilds of the West Central Illinois factory agricultural landscape. I hope to get my website up soon, with my .gedcom and family notes. Meanwhile, if you have questions about one of the surnames on my list, contact me and maybe we can swap info.

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Saturday, May 3, 2008

March 2, 1785 - Bart township, Lancaster County, Feb. 17 1785Whereas Agnes M'Ready, the wife of the subscriber, of Bart township, in the county of Lancaster, hath upon the insidious advice and interference of pretended friends, eloped from him, and now resides with her father Hugh Colter, of said township. This is therefore to give notice to all persons whatsoever, that I will pay no debt of her contracting, nor will allow any person indebted to me to pay the same to her. The subscriber has taken this public method to prevent those pretended friends or others from lendng her money, which he is convinced they would not be induced to do from any other motives than to oppress him, and increase the animosity that now subsists, occasioned by their interference and advice.Daniel M 'Ready(Posted by Joyce Peck on Rootsweb Colter Surname Board, 12/12/2005, from "Runaway Women, elopemens and other miscreant deeds, as advertised in the Pennsylvania Gazette, 1728-1789 (together with a fewe abused wives and unfortunate children)," compiled by Judith Ann Highley Meier, pub. Closson Press, 1993, p. 88)

I am, of course, very grateful to Joyce Peck for posting this. and I sure would like to know more about what was going on. Daniel and Agnes apparently got back together. They had a son, Stewart, born about this time, and another, Hugh, born three years later. Stewart married Margaret McCoy, and they became my 4th great-grandparents on my father's side; their daughter Julia married Samuel McGowan/Megown. There were two older girls, as well, Mary (b. 1779) and Elizabeth (b. 1781). I imagine they got married, but haven't found any information about them. Elizabeth would have been 4 and Mary 6, so I imagine Agnes took them home with her.

Why did she leave, and why did she go back? I'll probably never know.

Daniel was "plantation Irish"; the information I have is that he was born in County Donegal. Agnes was born in Pennsylvania, but her father Hugh was another plantation Irishman, born in Belfast. The McCoys also immigrated from Ireland, so I'm guessing they may have been plantation Irish, but it's possible they were Irish-Irish.